Aw, hell. Put down your beer and turn off the Allmans, ’cause ol’ Matthew McConaughey has put his foot in it again. What’d he get up to this time? Well, shoot, he was doin’ an interview for GQ magazine and was asked about Washington, D.C.’s football team, which uses a racial slur against Native American people as its team name, and whether or not that team should change the name, as many groups have been pressuring them to do. And what did the All Rightin’ Angel have to say about this prickly matter? Nothing great:

What do you think about the calls for the team to change its name? Man, it's twofold. What interests me is how quickly it got pushed into
the social consciousness. We were all fine with it since the 1930s,
and all of a sudden we go, "No, gotta change it"? It seems like when
the first levee breaks, everybody gets on board. I know a lot of
Native Americans don't have a problem with it, but they're not going
to say, "No, we really want the name." That's not how they're going to
use their pulpit. It's like my feeling about gun control: "I get it.
You have the right to have guns. But look, let's forget that right.
Let's forget the pleasure you get safely on your range, because it's
in the wrong hands in other places."

But as a fan, it would hurt you a little to see the logo gone? It's not going to hurt me. It's just... I love the emblem. I dig it.
It gives me a little fire and some oomph. But now that it's in the
court of public opinion, it's going to change. I wish it wouldn't, but
it will.

Oof. He’s making sense at first, pointing out that, yes, it is interesting how cultural mores change over time, sometimes a pretty short amount of time. But then by the “I know a lot of Native Americans” part, the whole dang thing has gone off the rails. Do we get what McConaughey was trying to say here? Maybe. But it doesn’t seem to be anything all that good. He’s upset that you can’t have the team’s emblem anymore, because it gave him both fire and oomph, even though that emblem was representative of something deeply racist. Sigh.

McConaughey is no stranger to saying boneheaded things in interviews, but usually they’re at least in service to some well-intentioned, if garbled, message. This here? I dunno. It kinda just seems like he wishes an offensive term would stay put ’cause he likes it. Which is a really dumb position to take! Also kind of dumb? That we’re asking Matthew McConaughey about a controversy that is completely unrelated to his career, life, etc. in the first place. Yeah he’s a fan of the team, but who cares? Maybe we should start relying on Matthew McConaughey for information about the stuff that is pertinent to Matthew McConaughey, and then leave the other stuff to other people. I know that’s not really the nature of how this whole celebrity industry works, but it’s an ideal we can at least pretend to aspire to, right?

So, that’s that. Matthew McConaughey has gotten another taste of his own boot, a flavor he knows all too well at this point. Maybe he really would be better off in space.